SLA Measurements for Capacity Management

[Woody001]

Does anyone have examples of SLA measures/targets for Capacity Management?

We are currently outsourcing CapMgt to our IT Supplier and they have been unable to propose any useful SLAs that are easy to measure. SLA's currently suggested include the following:-

1) Percentage of estate monitored (e.g. target=100% of estate monitored)
2) Number of threshold breaches for an individual component (e.g. target=less than 3 per month)
3) Number of Incidents relating to Capacity/Performance (e.g. target=less than 100 Incidents per month).

However we are worried that if targets are set against the number of threshold breaches and/or Incidents then this could lead to negative behaviour. For example it would be easy for our supplier to make changes to the thresholds in order to avoid breaches and not raise Incidents just to meet their targets - both of which we dont want to encourage.

Any examples would be gratefully received.

thanks, Paul

[Diarmid]

Paul,

you seem to be asking about a minefield.

Are you really saying that your service provider defines the thresholds for your systems?

I cannot quite picture precisely what service is being provided here.

Who manages the infrastructure? You or the supplier? I don't see how to outsource capacity management; it is integral to infrastructure management. Do you mean that your supplier provides monitoring reports?

Conversely, if it is your IT supplier who provides and manages your infrastructure, then capacity management is entirely their pigeon and not a service to you; you only care about service provided, not the details of how they do it.

Either way round, what is the basis for anticipating changes in demand from the addition of new applications, changed or replaced applications, changes in utiliztion of current applications, fluctuations of peaks (whether regular or intermittent?

These as much as, or more than, maintaining the "clean" state of the infrastructure, are what lead to capacity issues and how you deal with them really needs to be documented in any agreement for a service.

It's hard to answer this without more information.
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